Personally I think it is a Syrian high-up general who has access to the weapons BUT his support for the regime is waivering. His honour (or whatever reason) does not permit him to defect soo.... setoff some of their known chem weapons so draw US/UK into the mess to bring it to a close

Only the regime has access to the weapons so who else could have launched it???? couldn't be the rebels they wouldn't be able to secure them

Yes there is the angle the rebels launched it to force the west hand equally CIA/MI6 doing it to force their leaders hands, a rogue general wanting the best for his country and his people fits occams razor *IF* it is confirmed chem weapons were used as who will be very hard to identify_________________the table is made from wood. forget what you learnt, the table is made from carbon. forget what you learnt, the table is made from protons. forget what you learnt, the table is made from quarks. forget what you learnt, the table is good for shagging on

Opoohbah murders only the bad guys. Since there are only bad guys in Syria, no innocent people will be hit by Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Opoohbah. Besides, these are Syrian people, not The People. What a fucking arsehole. What a fucking country.

This is yet another war Obama is trying to get us into._________________I, for one, am glad to be living on a planet with 776x the mass of the super-massive black hole at the center of the milky way just to keep Neptune in its daily orbit around the Earth.
auf alten Schiffen lernt man Segeln.

We (the west) need to stay well away, what are the Arab League doing ?

Agreed. Let them kill each other. Either side with the despot dictator who is friends with the most disgusting players in the world, or side with the terrorist backed "rebels" and arm Al Qaeda.

Lose/Lose

Our policy should be that of an astronomer looking at a binary star system through a telescope.

pantsonfire wrote:

You guys are too cynical. A few surgical air strikes will quickly bring the bad guys to their knees and restore peace to Syria.

They're all bad guys._________________I, for one, am glad to be living on a planet with 776x the mass of the super-massive black hole at the center of the milky way just to keep Neptune in its daily orbit around the Earth.
auf alten Schiffen lernt man Segeln.

<alex_jones_mode>
Coup my ass, it was always on the table as soon as they figured that oil is useful. This is just the second phase of Operation Ajax.
Al Quaeda are still doing the proxy work of US, this time not against the Soviet, but against the public opinion. All is as it used to be, or did you think CIA spend all that budget on paperclips? All payed for by the cocaine and heroin money, war on drugs my ass, USMC guarding the opium fields in Afghanistan because there are endangered species, oh wait, it was about democracy, oh wait, it was about finding that bearded dude in a cave with a laptop that was synchronising terrorist attacks on his own. The guy from a family that has direct contact with Bush family, you know, former Walkers, the descendants of slavers and stuff.
</alex_jones_mode>_________________“If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him”

Syria was under Emergency Law from 1963 to 2011, effectively suspending most constitutional protections for citizens, and its system of government is considered to be non-democratic.[7] Bashar al-Assad has been president since 2000 and was preceded by his father Hafez al-Assad, who was in office from 1970 to 2000.

Well it is also possible that the Syrian people was not happy after 50 years of Emergency laws .... and muzzie-communism probably sucks just as standard communism. The problem is not whether Assad is a bad guy (I mean he inherited his position as dictator from the father, like in North Korea) but how avoid helping al quaeda.

Quote:

Assadism
From 1970, when Hafez al-Assad took power, Syria has been under the control of the al-Assad family. Assad's regime was a personal regime; meaning a regime based and which revolves around the leader. The term Assadism was coined to explain how Assad's leadership cult dominates Syrian politics. The authorities have tried to portray the wisdom of Assad as "beyond the comprehension of the average citizen".[45] Assadism and neo-Ba'athist regime which currently runs Syria are based upon nepotism and ethnic favoritism – it was Assad who began the Alawitisation of the party and the military, and began building a regime based on loyalty to the leader's family.[46] Jamal al-Attasi, a former co-founder of Zaki al-Arsuzi's Arab Ba'ath Party and later Syrian dissident, claimed that "Assadism is a false nationalism. It's the domination of a minority, and I'm not talking just of the Alawites, who control the society's nervous system. I include also the army and the mukhabarat. [...] And despite its socialist slogans, the state is run by a class who has made a fortune without contributing–a nouvelle bourgeoisie parasitaire."[47] Despite this, Assadism is not an ideology – it's a cult of personality, but it's the closest thing Syria comes to an all-encompassing belief system, since both Ba'athist and Arab nationalist beliefs have been watered down to such an extent as to not hurt the regime's populist credentials.[48]

This is Iraq v2._________________There is, a not-born, a not-become, a not-made, a not-compounded. If that unborn, not-become, not-made, not-compounded were not, there would be no escape from this here that is born, become, made and compounded. - Gautama Siddharta

I had a countdown going in another thread, predicting that Obama would do this. I pointed out that there is no way in hell the Syrian government is behind those chemical attacks, because they were intentionally made right under the noses of UN chemical weapons observers.

This isn't Iraq v2. While the WMD lie thing is the same, there we at least had interests at stake (Hussein invading neighbors, trying to seize control of oil supply, aiming to be Hitler of Arab world). What have we got at stake in Syria?

This is nothing but a red herring to distract the public from their dissatisfaction with the Administration. We're not going to invade or occupy Syria, just cowardly bomb it from a safe distance. It's misdirection. It's the "perpetual war" scenario right out of 1984.

If anything, our involvement should be merely to provide non-combat assistance to whoever is losing at any given time, to maximize their collective opportunity to kill as many of each other as possible.

I have to say it was pretty funny to watch John Kerry, Mr. Anti Iraq War himself, now in Colin Powell's shoes, making an impassioned speech giving the Obama Administration's bullshit justifications and asserting that "the intelligence community is convinced" that it was the Syrian state who fired those chemical weapons. His inner Jane Fonda must be keeping him awake at night after that. _________________Deja Moo: the feeling that you've heard this bull before

I've been following the civil war in syria (watching allahu ackbar fights on liveleak) for a couple years now. It's funny when people act like this is a new issue because of the recent chemical attacks.

We're not going to war with Syria, I hate when people say that. We are of relative neutral standing with both Assad's forces and the FSA. There would be no one to fight, and the US is not going to become enemies against either.

BoneKracker wrote:

I pointed out that there is no way in hell the Syrian government is behind those chemical attacks, because they were intentionally made right under the noses of UN chemical weapons observers

Dude, it was Assad. They were the only ones with those things that would use them like that. They have a long history of keeping chemical weapons, it was on FSA controlled area, and Assad's forces are acting really fishy about. (First saying it didn't happen, then blaming the rebels, then denying UN investigation, etc.)

Bullshit. Chemical weapons are all over the region, and many are believed to have been smuggled out of Iraq and hidden in Syria during the regime's collapse.

The White House is full of shit.

Quote:

"Suggestions that there's any doubt about who's responsible for this are as preposterous as suggestions that the attack itself didn't occur," White House spokesman Jay Carney said on Tuesday.

The expected US military response to what officials here are calling a "heinous" attack by Assad's forces, is likely to send US-Russia relations to a new low, after months of policy clashes.

US officials have not publicly shamed Russia for its support of Syria, its top remaining Middle Eastern ally, but have clearly been aiming their rhetoric towards Moscow and Putin.

On Tuesday, Secretary of State John Kerry described "gut wrenching" scenes of Syrian civilians in their death throes in videos posted on social media sites after the attack.

"Anyone who can claim that an attack of this staggering scale could be contrived or fabricated needs to check their conscience and their own moral compass," Kerry said.

Methinks the lady doth protest too much. Also, notice Kerry's almost juvenile strawman there? Nobody is saying it's "contrived or fabricated", asswipe; they're saying there is very real doubt as to who did it. There's no way the Syrian government would have timed such a heavy use of chemical weapons to coincide exactly with the first good opportunity of the UN to observe and confirm it. Given Obama's standing ultimatum, that would be almost a guarantee if U.S. intervention, just as they were gaining the upper hand.

It's the last thing they would do. So I don't care what kind if highly compelling "intelligence evidence" the Obama administration cooks up presents to us, I am going to be very hard to convince. They are already starting to lie by saying the Syrian military are the only ones who could have done it._________________Deja Moo: the feeling that you've heard this bull before

Bullshit. Chemical weapons are all over the region, and many are believed to have been smuggled out of Iraq and hidden in Syria during the regime's collapse.

The White House is full of shit.

Quote:

"Suggestions that there's any doubt about who's responsible for this are as preposterous as suggestions that the attack itself didn't occur," White House spokesman Jay Carney said on Tuesday.

The expected US military response to what officials here are calling a "heinous" attack by Assad's forces, is likely to send US-Russia relations to a new low, after months of policy clashes.

US officials have not publicly shamed Russia for its support of Syria, its top remaining Middle Eastern ally, but have clearly been aiming their rhetoric towards Moscow and Putin.

On Tuesday, Secretary of State John Kerry described "gut wrenching" scenes of Syrian civilians in their death throes in videos posted on social media sites after the attack.

"Anyone who can claim that an attack of this staggering scale could be contrived or fabricated needs to check their conscience and their own moral compass," Kerry said.

Methinks the lady doth protest too much. Also, notice Kerry's almost juvenile strawman there? Nobody is saying it's "contrived or fabricated", asswipe; they're saying there is very real doubt as to who did it. There's no way the Syrian government would have timed such a heavy use of chemical weapons to coincide exactly with the first good opportunity of the UN to observe and confirm it. Given Obama's standing ultimatum, that would be almost a guarantee if U.S. intervention, just as they were gaining the upper hand.

It's the last thing they would do. So I don't care what kind if highly compelling "intelligence evidence" the Obama administration cooks up presents to us, I am going to be very hard to convince. They are already starting to lie by saying the Syrian military are the only ones who could have done it.

To compel and/or give the U.S. an excuse to intervene on their behalf with its mighty weapons. They're starting to lose, and this would likely turn the tide of the war.

The sacrifice of a few hundred lives is a small cost for victory. 70,000 or so (on their side alone) have died fighting for it already, and they're getting desperate.

Also, the opposition is not one homogenous entity trying to bring down the regime there and the FSA is only one of many groups, each with a different agenda. There are patriotic, secular, democratic Syrians who want freedom from Ba'athist oppression. There are Islamists (e.g., Muslim Brotherhood) who want to institute a traditional theocracy. There are Shiites trying to destroy and seize a Sunni state. There are ethnic Turkish groups fighting oppression. There are ethnic Kurdish groups fighting oppression. There are Salafi Jihadis. There's Al Qaeda.

If the opposition (which is currently losing) were to succeed, those groups would then battle it out for control, and they have very, very different ideologies. They don't like each other at all; they just happen to share a common enemy at present.

So this isn't a question of somebody "attacking themselves". It's a question of somebody sacrificing a few people (ones whom they might see as enemies ultimately anyway) to turn the tide of the war and achieve victory. The groups most likely to do that, and to have access to chemical weapons either hidden locally or smuggled in from elsewhere, are the militant Islamist groups.

Furthermore, there's also the possibility that this attack was perpetrated or facilitated by a foreign country with an interest in the outcome._________________Deja Moo: the feeling that you've heard this bull before

Also, the opposition is not one homogenous entity trying to bring down the regime there and the FSA is only one of many groups, each with a different agenda. There are patriotic, secular, democratic Syrians who want freedom from Ba'athist oppression. There are Islamists (e.g., Muslim Brotherhood) who want to institute a traditional theocracy. There are Shiites trying to destroy and seize a Sunni state. There are ethnic Turkish groups fighting oppression. There are ethnic Kurdish groups fighting oppression. There are Salafi Jihadis. There's Al Qaeda.

I used to think analysis like this was the only dimension in a conflict there was, until I read declassifieds in library of congress (freedom of information act) where CIA was making (among other things) an annual report about how Tito was doing, and what angle could be best used to destabilize Yugoslavia, and whether the nationalism was something that could be used and abused for that purpose. And lo and behold, people of different "nationalities" who lived in marriage for 30 years without even reflecting over that fact all of a sudden kept hearing on TV that they should hate each other, cos, like, everybody else does already. Who knew! _________________“If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him”

Also, the opposition is not one homogenous entity trying to bring down the regime there and the FSA is only one of many groups, each with a different agenda. There are patriotic, secular, democratic Syrians who want freedom from Ba'athist oppression. There are Islamists (e.g., Muslim Brotherhood) who want to institute a traditional theocracy. There are Shiites trying to destroy and seize a Sunni state. There are ethnic Turkish groups fighting oppression. There are ethnic Kurdish groups fighting oppression. There are Salafi Jihadis. There's Al Qaeda.

I used to think analysis like this was the only dimension in a conflict there was, until I read declassifieds in library of congress (freedom of information act) where CIA was making (among other things) an annual report about how Tito was doing, and what angle could be best used to destabilize Yugoslavia, and whether the nationalism was something that could be used and abused for that purpose. And lo and behold, people of different "nationalities" who lived in marriage for 30 years without even reflecting over that fact all of a sudden kept hearing on TV that they should hate each other, cos, like, everybody else does already. Who knew!

It's a classic result of destabilization. When the USSR collapsed, people started going back to their roots. This has happened over and over again in history, and the intelligence services of various countries have used it repeatedly during times of trouble to provoke regime change. (And this is why it's also staggering in retrospective how the Bush Administration could fail to have foreseen the civil war in Iraq.)

Here, I think it's pretty obvious that somebody who wants the opposition to win has carried out this attack in order to bring the U.S. into it. I think the Obama Administration is playing along because it's good politics (a convenient distraction) and because it's generally to our advantage for them to keep killing each other a while longer. While the Muslims are busy killing each other, they're not unifying and seizing us by our vulnerable and sensitive oil testicles, or invading the Balkans again or something.

While I don't think we should get involved (I think the French have the responsibility to take care of it), I'm not so much upset that he's going to bomb some Syrian government and military buildings than that he's lying about why. We've had enough of that. We've gotten to the point where our government is now telling us they lies they know damned well nobody believes, and we're acting like as long as they flapped their lips and said something I guess that's good enough.

I remember once reading about a study that showed people were likely to let you have your way as long as you gave a reason for what you wanted, even if the reason made absolutely no sense. They had a guy ask to cut in line to the photocopier and various other services, and when he just said, "Mind if I get in front of you, I'm in a big hurry.", people would tell him to fuck off. But, if he said, "Mind if I get in front of you, because my cat is vulnerable to humidity" or "mind if I cut in line, there's a snowstorm in Vermont", people would let him cut. It's one of those lemming things._________________Deja Moo: the feeling that you've heard this bull before